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Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

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Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#181

Post by dathinab »

levosmetalo wrote: post #69
arcturus17 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Spanish yet having lived in Germany for quite some time, I agree with you... I'm not saying there's no corruption in Germany - I think there's always going to be some level corruption at a certain scale of state - but there's no need to go as far as China or Russia for comparison. Just come to the South of Europe for a taste of what grand-scale corruption in what are otherwise (seemingly) high-functioning democ…

The issue is people are just not aware on the corruption in Germany because there's no "personal" and "everyday" corruption in a daily life. But if you look "up" the amount of corruption rise to the astonishing levels. Just remember Stuttgart 21 or the Berlin Airport, Hamburg Elb Philharmonic, Battleship Gorch Fock. Germany is full of such corrupt projects, it's obvious and everyone knows about it, but nobody yet wen…

> Berlin Airport

Sadly (luckily?) this wasn't corruption but plain out retarded levels of incompetence...

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#182

Post by dathinab »

peroporque wrote: post #103
donjoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a couple of years ago, once you fucked up, you resigned out of respect to your office/job/position. Looking at our current Minister of Transport 'Andi Scheuer', this does not seem to be the case any more. He is still in office after burning more than € 500M in the recent toll scandal [0]. [0]: https://www.dw.com/en/german-transport-minister-blasted-over...

Or even worse, von der Leyen got promoted to be head of the EU. I mean, wtf!

This really pissed me off. I mean she had been shown to be both bad at her job and corrupt and instead of kicking here out they promoted her away.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#183

Post by lioeters »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #36
DangerousPie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that the investment in copper was the wrong decision, but according to that article the minister actually sold his shares to Nixdorf (now Siemens?) immediately before becoming a minister. So I'm not quite sure if this is actually a case of corruption or just a case of being too conservative and incompetent (which is also quite widespread in politics).

He sold his shares hours(!) before being signed on as minister and he sold them to the company that benefited the most from the copper cabling that he pushed for. How you can mistake this obvious corruption for incompetence is beyond me.

This is what I question about Hanlon's razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity/incompetence."

In practice, when such "incompetence" involves millions (of Euro, dollars, etc.) - and those involved stand to gain from it - we ought to scrutinize it as a possible symptom of "malicious competence".

For me, "incompetence" sounds like an excuse or smokescreen, when there are those who profited from it. After all, numerous real-life cases suggest that corruption is endemic, if not inherent, in our institutions of politics, business, and public decision-making process.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#184

Post by j7ake »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #64
cosmodisk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All western countries are corrupt. The difference from the usual suspects is the way it's done. If in Russia, it may be as simple as cash in hand, in Germany or Britain it will be kids placement into a nice job, maybe a donation to a family run charity org, or a contract to friend's friend's construction company. Or even the good old one,where you do a favour and 5-7 years later, once not in government position anymo…

You're being downvoted because network effects aren't the same as corruption. Although it is certainly unpleasant to consider that government officials might be making decisions more favorable to one company than another in the hope or expectation that that they will get a board seat five years hence, it is worth noting that if they upset one company now, they may get the board seat on the other company. And since an…

The amount of public money you can funnel out or funnel in by cash in hand is limited to actual cash in hand. The level of corruption at the highest levels are on the order of a billion euros. I am not sure if you can get even close to billions of euros in corruption using only cash.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#185

Post by gridlockd »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #180
gridlockd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't prosecute "short selling", they prosecuted market manipulation: 1. Get a large short position 2. Publish damaging information 3. Profit It doesn't even matter if the information is true. If it is true, it is insider trading. If it isn't true, it is libel. Either warrants prosecution.

You don't understand what the word insider in "insider trading" means.

Are you sure you understand it? Insider trading is not limited to employees, that's a common misconception.

I don't know the German law on the matter, but I would wager that the prosecution was warranted, even when the court ends up determining that the charge doesn't hold.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#186

Post by Mirioron »

s5300 wrote: post #117
gumby wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this co…

Yeah, but you can literally be 72 hour psych holded with absolutely zero contact with the outside world by the decision of a single, simple psychiatrist. That's arguably worse than being secretly arrested.

The amazing thing is that these kinds of rules that allow for involuntary commitment are pretty standard in the West.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_interna...

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#187

Post by lioeters »

elliekelly wrote: post #65
squiggleblaz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most corruption stats that I have seen are based on perception of corruption. If people perceive it as dodgy but legal, or if people view it as the odd bad egg, then it won't affect perceptions, no matter how rife it is. If it doesn't affect perceptions, it doesn't affect measures.

There’s a really great documentary about how criminals used the disconnect between perception of corruption and actual corruption in Vatican City to launder money for decades. (And still do, really.) The name of the movie escapes me but I’m commenting in hopes that someone here will know.

A few keyword searches found:

- Vatican Inc. - https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/vatican-inc/

- Holy Money - Vatican City Corruption

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#188

Post by cool_dude85 »

qayxc wrote: post #123
levosmetalo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though losing the job is not a punishment, not everyone even lost his job. Andreas Sheuer is still in charge of transport as a federal Minister, despite the 500,000,000 € heavy corruption scandal. Von der Leyen got even "promoted" to EU-lead position after heavy corruption scandal last year when she was a Defense Minister of Germany. Not only Germany, but in the whole EU commission leadership it would be hard to…

The problem is that gross incompetence is not a crime. You can't arrest someone on account of them being an idiot. It's the responsibility of the other party members and especially the opposition to demand him being removed from office. Funnily enough the Green Party demanded exactly that, but then again that's the same party that wants general speed limits... So yeah, of course any party that wants to get reelected…

Nice system you've got set up where it's the job of the opposition party to demand removal from office, presumably without the parliamentary power to actually make it happen. So you get to be corrupt as you want, and when it's found out and nothing happens, the other guys take the blame!

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#189

Post by pkaye »

ketzu wrote: post #104
maze-le wrote: post #26

> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but you are in danger of getting a fraudulent "psychiatric diagnosis" if you are a tax investigator uncovering dirt about some politicians or their cronies.[0][1] In this case the investigator got free, but I am sure there are some cases out there of people who di…

Short summary in english of the contents of the spiegel article: Four Hessian tax investigators noted many problems. Their employer (the state of Hessen) got them psychiatricly examined. The examiner found them "paranoid troublemaking" and that they lost their sense for reality. Therefore, they got diagnosed as permanently unable to work and pensioned. According to the wikipedia article the psychiatrist has to pay th…

Could the employees have requested a second opinion from another psychiatrist not connected to their employer?

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#190

Post by fluffything »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #179

Looks like BaFin was not merely incompetent but actively malfeasant. People were apparently wrongly convicted due to their good-faith efforts to expose the fraud. BaFin’s role includes ensuring that listed companies abide by securities law, for instance by communicating truthfully with their shareholders. But BaFin didn’t look into the lawsuit’s allegations against Wirecard because there was no evidence the company h…

And be compensated?
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